


Control

by Dotdotbeepdot



Series: Sides Prequel Stories [6]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Fluff and Angst, Gen, It starts as like a flashback kinda a few times but by the end their in the present, Kid Fic, Pre-Canon, Sides As Family (Sanders Sides), dark sides only mentioned, more like a hopeful/open ending but its nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29699223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dotdotbeepdot/pseuds/Dotdotbeepdot
Summary: Logan has had issues with eating for years. The others never understood why and they're more than worried about him.He finally reveals why.
Relationships: None
Series: Sides Prequel Stories [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2074788
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	Control

**Author's Note:**

> Please be careful this gets into Logan's thoughts a lot while he's eating.

Logan had a problem he couldn’t fix. 

He wished he could say it wasn’t a problem. At first, it was just a choice. Logan thought he could miss one meal, or maybe two, and it would be okay. He didn’t need to eat anyways, he wasn’t really human. Just a fake body, an aspect of someone real. Eating only gave him momentary pleasure and a small bout of energy that he could get doing any other numerous activities. 

He didn’t  _ need _ to eat.

But now he couldn’t.

Patton always insisted on making dinner for them. It was useless, just another attempt on acting like real family and friends in real life. Roman humored him, however, and with his support, Patton wouldn’t let Logan skip a single one.

He would never beg. But staring at the food in front of him, listening to Patton’s gentle encouragement to just take a bite, he was close to figuratively dropping onto his knees. 

He just couldn't. He couldn’t eat.

Realistically, he knew he could. It was simply just picking up the fork― or whatever utensil they were using at that moment, if any― grabbing some food, putting it into his mouth, and eating it. Simple. 

It should be simple.

“Come on, Logan,” Patton whispered, careful to keep his voice low. Logan felt paralyzed, unable to even look at his companion. “Just one bite and I’ll let you go.”

Just one bite. Just one bite. Just one bite.

“Just one?” He clarified. Raising his eyes up from where he stared at his plate. Patton nodded, smiling with a look of pain he hid just out of sight in his eyes. Logan looked back down at his plate. It was just a sandwich, grilled cheese to be exact. Only one slice of it (Patton thought he would at least eat one). 

He should be able to do this.

He could do this. 

“This is ridiculous.” Roman complained, chin resting on his hand, long since finished with his own meal. Patton’s shoulders dropped and his eyes closed, letting out a halted breath.

“I don’t understand why I have to do this,” Logan’s tongue metaphorically let loose. Roman had ruined his concentration. “Eating is a chore you are adamant we do every day. There isn’t any point to it. Our bodies are only fabrications made up by the overactive imagination of a child.”

“Logan,  _ please,”  _ Patton sighed. He reached across the table and laid his hand down flat in front of his plate. Logan stared at it. “Please, just take a bite. I’m really worried about you. This can’t be healthy.”

“You have no reason to be worried,” Logan shook his head. The smell of the food was becoming too much for him. “Eating isn’t necessary for us. The only reason why you feel the need to eat is because no one can imagine human existence without eating. I don’t need to eat.”

“But you’re so thin—”

“Easy to change,” Logan waved his hand and his form changed to a more healthy weight. He blinked away the dizziness that action caused him. Taking a deep breath, he kept going. “Our choices might be able… alter our appearance—” he sent a glance towards Roman, pointedly at the fangs he continued to cover and change. He looked away when Roman noticed his stare. “But we are in control of them.”

“But you can’t keep that up forever! Shapeshifting takes up energy and you don’t have much energy when you’re not eating!”

“Energy I can make up for by sleeping or working!”

“Oh for the love of Aphrodite!” 

Roman banged his fist on the table. Logan looked away from Patton, head feeling faint and hearing filling with static. He couldn’t hear what they were saying now, it was hard to listen. Hard to… stay awake. 

Logan had fainted that night and that made him realize that this was worse than he previously thought. His choice to stop eating was getting in the way of his responsibilities and causing him to worry about other things than what was important. He knew he needed help.

But he didn’t know how to get it. 

Ever since that day, Patton has been more sensitive about the situation. He wouldn’t try forcing Logan to eat anymore and he made him food that he is willing to eat. Logan appreciated it, but eating toast everyday for dinner wasn’t going to help him. 

“I want to eat what you’re all having today.”

Patton turned his head towards him and froze from where he was putting a tray of bread rolls in the oven. He put the tray back on the counter and closed the oven, excitedly shaking off his mitts. “Really!?”

“Yes. I’m grateful that you changed your approach to my meals, but it has been months since I have…” he cleared his throat, finding the topic of his incident embarrassing to talk about. “What I’m getting at is that I have been doing better. You can agree that I have been eating semi-regularly with you for quite a few weeks now, correct?”

Patton nodded wildly. “Yes, yeah. You really have been doing so good eating, Logan. I don’t want you to push yourself too far—”

“You agree, and therefore I want to eat… whatever you are currently making.”

“Pasta.”

Logan grimaced. He picked the wrong night to do this. 

“I can make something else for you?” Patton noticed his cringe. Logan shook his head and raised an open palm towards him. 

“No, no, I can eat it. No use going back on my word now,” he hesitated for a moment. “Can you leave mine plain?”

Patton smiled. “Of course! If you want, you can even help me out. I could use a hand or too.”

Logan agreed to help. Maybe being surrounded by all these different smells and watching the food cook will help him feel more comfortable with eating it. Once dinner was finished, Logan set up the table quickly and efficiently while Patton went off to find wherever Roman could be. 

“Woah, Logan actually here before me? What a pleasant surprise.” 

Roman hasn’t been as sensitive to Logan’s situation as Patton has, but he had a bit more of an understanding of it now. Logan remembered when he had first woke up it was because of frantic yelling from the prince as he shook him awake on the floor. He was on guard for a while to make sure Logan didn’t collapse like that again, but he still teased him for his “boring” choice in meals. 

“Hello, Roman.” Logan greeted not unkindly. He sat down in his chair and waited for the others to pile food on their plates. Neither of them blinked at how long it took Logan to work up the nerve to reach for his pickings. 

He grabbed a roll and scooped a small amount of noodles on his plate, avoiding the chunky tomato sauce that the other two had poured on, as well as the butter they put on their bread. Even after sitting back down, he waited to eat. 

“You alright, Logan?” Roman asked. He alternated his gaze from the logical side to his sad plate of food. “…You know you don’t have to eat that if you don’t want to?”

“Or can’t.” Patton added on. He smiled reassuringly at Logan. “Either way, we see the effort you’re making. It’s okay if you aren’t ready to eat the pasta. You can just have the bread.”

Logan kept his mouth shut. He didn’t realize he was picking at the bread until he looked down. He wanted to eat everything. He wanted to get better now. He wanted to metaphorically take the big step to recovery and not small, baby steps. 

But he knew that he couldn’t eat the stupid, stringy pasta just yet. 

He took a bite of the roll and sighed through his nose. Even though he was disappointed with his effort, Patton and Roman weren’t.

“There you go, big guy! Or— uh—”

“See, that’s good enough!” Patton was grinning ear from ear. He averted his eyes back to his plate, trying to make Logan feel more comfortable. “Roman, don’t stare.”

“Right, right!” Roman looked down as well, picking up his fork and twirling the noodles up and into his mouth. 

With neither of them looking, Logan smiled fondly and took another bite. 

Now, Logan was better. Much better than before. 

He still didn’t eat much more than simple carbohydrates, but ever since Anxiety has joined their meals— and Logan appreciated that he did considering he had some experience with helping people eat— he was eating other things and more often. He was now eating lunch, unlike before when he would just eat some toast in the morning and then nothing until he tried to force something down at dinner. 

He was by no means completely recovered, but he wasn’t a danger to himself anymore. 

Of course, there were still times where the thought of eating made him feel sick and he would end up going to bed that night with an empty stomach. And after a bad day, he would fight Patton and Anxiety on eating with the same excuses he made over two years ago now to let him go. 

And lately, he was going back on his progress. 

Logan and Roman had a particularly bad fight that day about Thomas and Patton had hone hiding in his room. Not even Anxiety had shown his face yet. So Logan wasn’t the one skipping dinner tonight. In fact, he was the only one at the table, still waiting for Patton to pop out of nowhere with plates and bowls of food. 

That wasn’t good. They needed to eat and if they weren’t eating, it was much harder for Logan to even think about eating. Even if this was Roman’s fault, he should attempt to fix this so that he could stay on track. He wasn’t going to relapse now because Roman couldn’t handle not being the center of everyone’s attention. 

Logan got up from the table with a screech from his chair. He took off to Roman’s room. If he could get Roman to see his side and apologize, then he could help get the others and they could still be on schedule if they skipped the whole cooking process and summoned their dinner. 

Knocking on the intricate carvings on Roman’s door, he waited impatiently, tapping his foot on the floor. He didn’t have to wait very long for a reply. Roman must not be working on anything important that would excuse his absence from the table. 

“What is it!?” Roman shouted from the other side. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood to have this conversation either. 

“It’s me, Logan,” he said simply. “I wanted to talk to you about today. I know you have a hard time admitting when you’re wrong but—”

Logan stopped himself as the door swung open and the angry side stood eye to eye with him. 

_ “Wrong?!”  _ He said incredulously. He let out a loud, fake laugh. “Ha! I wasn’t  _ wrong!  _ I stand by what I said. You  _ do  _ work Thomas too hard and I’m tired of that! I’m sure everyone else is too.”

“Thomas shouldn’t be listening to you all the time, Roman. This constant daydreaming at school has to stop. His grades are slipping because of you.”

“I think his grades are slipping because  _ you  _ are so annoying that Thomas is doing anything not to listen to you! If you tried changing the way to talk to him, maybe we would listen to you!” Roman shoots back, making Logan’s already thin patience decimate. “I mean, you do nothing but lecture him and us about school when we’ve got so much more on our plate!”

“We have nothing on our plates and that’s the problem!”

Logan snapped his mouth shut and turned his head away. By the stars, Roman got on his nerves so much. He couldn’t grasp that somethings aren’t about him and Thomas should just stop listening to him because all it’s going to lead to is—

“What?”

Logan’s mind stopped it’s little tangent and opened his eyes— he doesn’t remember closing them. He also didn’t remember when his breathing grew heavy and heated, nor his hands clenched into fist. It was very unlike him to grow so worked up over a conversation. 

Roman looked… concerned.

“What?” He repeated Roman’s own question.

“You said our plates are empty and that’s the problem?”

“I…” he had said that. He didn’t know why he had said that. “None of you showed up for dinner. I’m— we’re behind schedule now.”

They stared at each other for a while, neither really knowing what to do next. Neither were very good at the…  _ feelings  _ department. Roman because of his high emotions and little thought behind them and Logan because…

Because…

“Eating is the one thing that I can control.”

He swallowed at the admission. He never really said it out loud before. He regretted saying it now. 

Logan was about to leave, apologize for any disruption and go straight to his room, but before he could open his mouth to do just that, Roman put a hand on his arm. 

“It’s okay,” he said with a soft voice that was also unlike the brash prince. Logan felt his throat thicken with unwanted emotions. He didn’t like this change in both of them. “Help me understand.”

He hesitated. More out of fear of vulnerability than trying to get his thoughts together. “When… when King split and Deceit left… I thought it was my fault. I was too passive and let everyone figuratively walk all over me. I’m sure it’s just because of how Thomas acted as a child, he didn’t use his brain as much as he used his impulsive heart.

“But everything was getting out of control and I spent so many nights and skipped so many meals trying to figure out if we could ever get the original, whole Creativity back. It was the most reckless and incorrigible I’ve ever been. And when you came back… something must’ve clicked for me that— that the King was gone.”

Roman looked down at his feet.

“I cannot pinpoint the day I stopped eating, but I thought it would be okay. I thought I had control over it,” Logan swallowed, feeling the fight that fueled him leak out of him. “But even that grew beyond me.”

Logan was choking up which was more humiliating than admitting to his lack of control. He shouldn’t cry. He’s fifteen, not a little kid. He shouldn’t be crying over conclusions he’s come to years ago. 

His breathing halted when he was suddenly pulled forward into something warm and stable. Something somehow carrying even more of that heat wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him impossibly closer. His hands were trembling just slightly as he brought his arms up to mimic it. 

Roman was hugging him. 

Logan couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged him like this. He couldn’t remember even ever hugging someone back. 

But this was Roman. This was  _ Creativity. _ This was all he had left of his old childhood friend and if he were to hug anyone like this, it would be him. 

“C’mon,” Roman muttered into his hair, gently pulling his arms off. “Let’s go eat.”

Logan could only nod. He has said enough today. 

**Author's Note:**

> I finally get a chance to talk about this hc I have lol.
> 
> I've been wanting to bring this up a couple times in a nice way like this. I didn't want a story about Logan's suffering, I wanted him to be getting better. It just hasn't come up organically until recently with more lore added to the storyline (Logan and King being former friends, Logan expressing his opinions, his worries about Janus and Remus, ect).
> 
> And originally Patton was gonna be the one Logan spills all this to, but then I remembered how Patton was feeling at this point in their lives and decided to take Logan's only quote about Thomas' emo phase being too feeling-sy for him and changed it up to Roman.
> 
> Ramble over, hope you liked it lol.


End file.
